The Ipswich midfielder Jim Magilton returns after a long absence through injury

The Ipswich midfielder Jim Magilton returns after a long absence through injury.. The last time Scott Booth was in Tokyo, he was home before he even had time to send a postcard. If Booth books a return trip to Japan next summer, an entire country will be following his lead. The last time Scott Booth was in Tokyo, he was home before he even had time to send a postcard. If Booth books a return trip to Japan next summer, an entire country will be following his lead.
The man whose passport has rarely been far from his side in recent years will be entrusted with securing Scotland’s place in the 2002 World Cup finals.

As befits a wanderer, the whistlestop intinerary will squeeze in Glasgow and Brussels with flights to and from Amsterdam on either side.The striker is used to Schipol Airport. His career has seemingly been stuck in transit for several years, yet now at the age of 29 Booth is ready to embark on the voyage for which he always seemed suited. Once he was Scotland’s rising son, now pointing them towards Japan and Korea will ensure the sun does not set on his career before he has one last chance to reclaim his stage.It has taken Booth eight long years to amass his 18 caps, and, at times, the logjam of forwards before him has seemed longer than the queue at immigration Not now. The national manager, Craig Brown, is starved of front men who are actually playing for their clubs and Booth’s renaissance in Holland with FC Twente Enschede has put him clearly in the frame to start on Saturday in the crucial match with Croatia at Hampden Park.Kevin Gallacher, whose goal in Zagreb last October ensured a creditable 1-1 draw, is on the bench at Preston following his release from Newcastle United Billy Dodds can only dream of that. The Rangers striker has more chance of being found playing in his golf club’s Saturday medal than at Ibrox: in March, just days after netting a World Cup double against Belgium, a bemused Dodds returned to his club to find himself sitting in the stand again.Booth can empathise with that. Four years ago he was taking a back seat and not even the tangible reward of the game’s highest honour could compensate for his inactivity. The Scot was a substitute when Borussia Dortmund won the World Club Championship in Japan by beating Cruzeiro of Brazil Booth felt like a fraud “I stayed on the bench for the whole game,” he recalls.

“I had flown all that way across the world, trained for a few days and grabbed my medal which has ended up in the loft.”Until Manchester United’s victory in 1999, I was the only British player ever to have won a World Club championship medal, but it meant nothing to me It meant more to my family. But I am honest, and unless I step on the park and merit something, it’s not my achievement.”Booth has needed that inner resolve as his career has fluctuated from boy wonder at Aberdeen, where his emergence as a teenager over a decade ago seemed to be fulfilled when he was awarded his first Scotland cap against the-then World Champions, Germany, in 1993. In his next game, a few months later in Estonia, came the first goal. How easy could this international football be?”Things got off to a flier for Scotland,” he smiles. “I was only on the pitch for five minutes in Estonia when I scored.” Four more goals followed as Booth contributed to Scotland’s qualification for Euro ‘96, yet little did he realise that he would have to wait four years to find the net again for his country.Enforced inactivity at Dortmund had taken the edge off his game, and Booth was jettisoned by Brown after the 1998 World Cup finals. Yet when his three-year exile ended with the friendly in Poland in April, the striker made the most of his recall, coolly stroking in the penalty which gave Scotland a 1-1 draw.”I actually wanted to take the responsibility of the penalty, I wasn’t a bag of nerves,” Booth reflects “It was a nice feeling to come back with a goal. The gap between my Scotland goals is not something I think about, but when I look at the dates in black and white it is scary.